Rukum: It is revealed that national language has become the main impediment for students in the community schools in Eastern part of Rukum district to continue their study.

According to teachers, students who speak Kham Magar language as their mother tongue drop out of school abruptly after being unable to understand the text taught and written in Nepali language.

Despite the government´s announcement to guarantee the right to gain primary level education through students´ mother tongues, the Kham speaking students are forced to study in Nepali, which is unintelligible to them.

To retain the dwindling numbers of students, some of the schools in the area have started teaching in Kham language, but without any text book. The public schools in 7 VDCs including Taksera, Hukam, Maikot, Kol, Ranghsi, Kakri and Mahat have been using Kham language for the teaching purpose up to 3rd grade.

After the government failed to provide the school textbook in Kham language, the Kham speaking teacher were forced to teach their student orally.

“We have started teaching students´ upto class 3 in Kham language after they could not understand the Nepali language,” said Ganesh Bahadur Basnet, teacher at Mahendra Higher Secondary School. “ We were forced to start teaching in their mother tongue even if there are no text book in the language as the students were found uninterested in school due to the language problem,” he added.

Basnet informed that Kham speaking teachers are faced with many complexities in translating Nepali text books which is also time consuming.

“We have no option but to continue teaching by translating the available Nepali text books. The translation is an entailing and laborious task full of complexities,” said Bishnu Sharma, teacher at Parbat Higher Secondary School.

Sharma also demanded the government to provide the school text book in the mother tongue of the students at primary school. The teachers also teach the primary students Nepali language.

According to the District Education Office (DEO), there are 13,000 Kham speaking student in the various school in primary level. DEO has said that the text book could not be translated into local language due to lack of resource and means.

source:republica,25 Nov 2012